


For Earth Too Dear

by xhiro



Category: Love Hime - Fandom, 弱虫ペダル | Yowamushi Pedal
Genre: F/M, I literally hate myself, One big ironic joke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 12:34:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3134699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xhiro/pseuds/xhiro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We always talk about the things the victors gain, but never about the things they had to leave behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Earth Too Dear

The dust had long settled from their battle and the smoke had finally cleared, but long after it was finished, Kotori stayed there, cradling the body of the boy she once loved.

  
She reached down to brush back his bangs from his face gently. His handsome face was battered from their fight, a violent distant blur from lives ago, but it was still as beautiful to Kotori now as it was the day she first laid eyes on him. The first time she met his eyes. The first time she learned that her heart could soar like that.

  
The first time she learned that it could break like this.

  
Because she was breaking.

  
"Arimaru-kun," she choked out in a hoarse whisper, hoarse from crying, hoarse from screaming, screaming all the things she could never tell him. Could never tell him now.

  
"Why did you have to do this...?" She asked him bitterly.

  
It must have been some cosmic joke that the universe was playing on her that her first love was also her mortal enemy.

 

Kotori had always wondered-how Arimaru could be at times bright and brilliant. Like the dancing lights she saw when she finally produced her first spell.

  
But other times-he was a storm. Dark and violent, and one that Kotori didn't know how to navigate.

  
She remembered Mage telling her once that without dark, there couldn't be light.

  
\--

  
_"Kotori-sama! Are you listening?" Mage had groaned at her in the gravelly voice that was most certainly accompanied by a look of long-suffering._

  
_Kotori was rolling around on her bed._

  
_"Kotori-sama!"_

  
_"I heard you the first time," she finally responded sulkily, pausing in her rolling. "But I don't get it."_

 

_"Which part don't you understand?"_

  
_"If there is light, why can't it just squash out all the dark?" In one of her rare moments of concentration, she actually considered what her companion was saying. "Wouldn't that be better?"_

  
_Her sheep companion eyed her with interest for a moment (possibly thanking the heavens that she was paying attention for once). He began in the voice that he thought sounded most sagely,"...without the darkness, light cannot exist. They balance each other out," he hopped over, approaching his mistress, "Without light, there can be no shadows." With a final push of his tiny hooves, he moved Kotori's wand towards her._

  
_"Only in the darkest night can the brightest light be seen."_

  
_Kotori's gaze traveled downwards. The pink jewels in the wand glistened back at her. A gnawing feeling worked at her insides. Her staff seemed to be heavier than it was before. Was it always so big?_

  
\---

  
At that time, she didn't really understand Mage's words, but she knew. Perhaps some part of her always knew, that he was right.

  
She understood that in full force now as she sat in the ruins of the school. As she traced her fingers lovingly, and a little brokenly, along the boy's face.

  
Arimaru was the part that balanced her out.

  
She needed him.

  
The light and dark would always co-exist. And perhaps that's what this was. An exchange. Because she knew that her light was gone. Arimaru had taken it with him. And for a long time afterwards, her world would be grey, because she couldn't see any light.

  
"Arimaru-kun," she greeted him one last time, as her tears dropped onto his face. She paused a moment, waiting. But his face remained impassive. The same magic wouldn't work twice after all.

 

She leaned down and brushed his lips with hers. A chaste goodbye, barely a touch.

  
It was alright that Arimaru took her light with him, because she was taking his darkness with her. In this way, he would always be a part of her.

  
The light needed the darkness.

  
And if she was maybe a little more hollow than she was before, that was alright too. She would take this hollow and name it Arimaru and she would carry it for the rest of her life.

 

And it was alright.

 

"Imaizumi-kun, what are you doing?"

  
He slammed the screen of his laptop down so quickly that he was fairly sure he heard something shattering-and even then he covered the device protectively with his body. He prayed that some deity would take mercy on him and that the bispectacled boy hadn't seen anything.

  
"That's-it's nothing!" And then for good measure, "Kinjou said he had something to speak to you about."

  
Onoda still stared at Imaizumi for a few seconds curiously before he shrugged his shoulders and walked off.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a complete wreck and I think you and I both know it.


End file.
